


hoarfrost

by chidorinnn



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Lyrium Addiction, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, and romances with former Templars don't play out nearly as smoothly as you'd think, in which Circle trauma is real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 21:10:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18484426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chidorinnn/pseuds/chidorinnn
Summary: The Commander turns, closes the distance between them with long, hurried strides. (She couldn’t get away even if she had the energy to try.) “Are you all right?” he asks, and she knows that the answer expected of her isyes.He crouches down before her, reaches towards her with a gloved hand — and it’s a far cry from a Templar’s gauntlet, but all she can see islight.“Don’t.”





	hoarfrost

The life of a Circle mage post-Circle is one of compromise. Juniper knows this — is intimately familiar with this — so it does not come as much of a surprise when they, reluctantly, decide to leave well before the healers deem her fit to travel. It’s not comfortable, but she theoretically _can_ put one foot in front of the other as what’s left of the Inquisition marches somewhere, or maybe nowhere.

As is the case for most Circle mages, there’s a lot she _can_ do, in theory: she _can_ march through Templar-infested territory because the trail is flat and Senior Enchanter Mireille has bad knees; she _can_ listen to the Templar half a decade younger than her as he rattles off, in the span of half a breath, how to hunt and how to cook. 

This — and everything else about her very existence — is compromise. ( _There can be no compromise_ , said the apostate in Varric’s _Tale of the Champion_.)

In theory, Varric, Bull, and Dorian are supposed to be helping her walk — but Bull and Dorian have fallen behind, talking about something or perhaps nothing. There’s a furrow to Varric’s brow and a distant look in his eyes that makes it perhaps more obvious than he’d like to admit that he doesn’t want to be disturbed. 

She tries to put one foot in front of the other — but despite the abundance of blankets and cloaks draped over her, the cold has seeped into her bones and it leaves her feeling shaky and unsteady on her feet. She crumples to the ground, her legs all but folding under her, and there’s more cold as the soft snow cushions her fall.

The Commander turns, closes the distance between them with long, hurried strides. (She couldn’t get away even if she had the energy to try.) “Are you all right?” he asks, and she knows that the answer expected of her is _yes_.

He crouches down before her, reaches towards her with a gloved hand — and it’s a far cry from a Templar’s gauntlet, but all she can see is _light_.

“ _Don’t_.”

Her voice comes out in an ugly snarl. The Knight Captain — _Commander_ — recoils ever so slightly, and for a long moment, he looks at her, a furrow to his brow that is not quite anger and not quite hurt. 

—and then, there’s a pair of large hands under her arms, pulling her roughly to her feet. “Sorry about that, Boss,” Bull mutters as he pats the snow off of her, his hand thumping so painfully against her back that it makes her cough.

Varric, in an instant, is at her side again, effortlessly taking her arm and bringing it around his shoulders so that she can shift the brunt of her weight to him. “Has anyone ever told you that you have all the grace of a bronto in a porcelain shop?” he asks Bull, his voice wavering on the edge of a laugh.

She takes a deep breath, shifts her weight so that she’s not leaning on Varric quite so much. “All right?” he asks her more gently, raising an all too knowing eyebrow.

She looks to the Commander, several paces ahead, as he leans towards the soldier nearest to him and say loudly enough for her to hear, “We should make camp soon… let the Herald rest awhile.”

In the space between ancient, all-powerful beings and a hole in the sky, there’s little room for her to complain — so she endures.

* * *

 

In her earliest memories, her fingers are curled around the edge of a needle, thread on her tongue so that it will be easier to force it through the needle’s loop because her fingers are too clumsy to cooperate all the way.

Embroidery, her mother had always said, marked the difference between art and servants’ work. In hindsight, maybe it was a little ridiculous to spend all this time learning how to weave pictures in cloth, when it would have been far more useful to learn how to mend clothes. There were servants to take care of that, and everything else she could possibly need. It wasn’t something she questioned — nor were the rooms draped in blue, larger than the Apprentices’ quarters at the Ostwick Circle and enough to house an entire family — nor were the daily visits to the Chantry, the handful of sovereigns her father would slip into the donations box. At this point in her life, this was normal. This was _expected_.

Even back then, before the Circle, _Trevelyan_ had always been more important than _Juniper_. Trevelyan meant power, wealth, piety, and everything you were supposed to aspire to in this world. The Maker smiled on people like her parents, said the Chantry sisters — a debt repaid in lifelong service. It was lucky, people had said, that none of her brothers had been born with magic, despite the branch in their family tree that could trace its lineage back to Tevinter — and though she was too far away to hear it, later, that it was a shame that that very magic had blossomed so spectacularly within her.

She remembers the last day she saw her parents only in bits and pieces — in the simple, comfortable shift the servants had dressed her in the day she was taken to the Chantry’s doorstep, in her father’s sharp voice as he explained to the Chantry sisters how she’d very nearly singed off half her eldest brother’s hair, in her mother’s empty platitudes of what an _honor_ it would be for her only daughter to become a _scholar_. Even back then, it was odd that her life was never truly hers to give — because _Trevelyan_ would always be more important than _Juniper_ , just as _mage_ would always take precedence over _nobility_.

—but in the Circle, the name _Trevelyan_ meant little. In the wake of her studies, her old life lay forgotten. No one would tell her that it was something she would never get back, but she knew it all the same — why else would her parents refuse to even write to her? Why else would her second eldest brother, a Templar, not even try to see her?

In those early days, she would look up at the statue of Andraste in the corner of the Chantry, defiantly, and wonder just what it was about this woman that convinced her parents and her brothers to abandon one of their own so easily. It wasn’t _service_ that Juniper had given her life to — not when her life had never been her own to give.

It made sense, though, in its own heartbreaking way — what use did anyone, least of all a noble family known for its piety, have for a child rotting away in a Chantry’s prison?

* * *

 

But in hindsight, the Ostwick Circle hadn’t been _that_ bad. It wasn’t as bad as Kirkwall — even the worst Templars Ostwick had to offer would never go so far as to threaten the Rite of Annulment on a whim.

—but there had been Ser Carrow. It was never said aloud, but it was known that if you were a woman of a certain profile — tall, slender, fair-skinned and dark-haired, and it didn’t matter if you were human or elven — he would always be there with you, wherever you were — staring, endlessly, and though you would always know why, you could never say it aloud.

—because then his attention would turn, inevitably, to you — and then you wouldn’t be allowed to turn away. What you would do instead was watch for him in the halls, in the library. If you saw someone in his line of sight, you would make up an excuse to get her out of there as soon as possible, and pray that she would do the same for you should you find yourself on the receiving end of his attention one day.

(There had been one woman Juniper shared a room with — an elven woman some years older than her named Amhaira who had disappeared with him for hours, and then some nights later, woke up in tears, her hands pressed to her mouth to muffle the sobs choking her. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she wept. “Not outside the alienage.”

And then Senior Enchanter Mireille — then just Enchanter — pulled her close, pushing Amhaira’s head onto her shoulder and carding her thin fingers through her hair. “You’ll get through this, love,” she said, and deliberately did not include the caveat that Amhaira would have no choice but to get through this.)

Failure — to master your magic, or to simply _obey_ — mean death, Tranquility, and dishonor to a family Juniper only knew as far as she shared their name — and though Ser Carrow never turned her way, she couldn’t shake the feeling of _eyes_ on her when she was studying, practicing, bathing, even sleeping. There was no way to prove that it was happening, but there was no way to _disprove_ it either — not when she heard a boy some years her junior sobbing into an enchanter’s shoulder, demanding why Ser Lewyn would _do_ such a thing — not when someone from her first tutoring group, back when she was still an apprentice, laid bandage after bandage on a deep gash on their forearm, in the unmistakeable shape of a blade.

She swallowed her fear, clenched her fists so tightly that her nails left crescents in her palms, pushed past the nausea that threatened to send her meals right back up because failure to retain her composure meant death, Tranquility, and dishonor. No, it wasn’t as bad as Kirkwall — but nothing would ever be as bad as Kirkwall.

—and she endured. And she endured.

* * *

 

Cullen, for the most part, keeps his distance. She can’t tell whether it’s more for his benefit, or hers.

It’s not that she’s ungrateful for it — how he makes it a point to never engage her directly unless there’s at least one other person there with them — how he looks the other way whenever she draws her staff, in an all too obvious subversion of everything she’s come to expect from a Templar.

—how, in the days immediately after they stumble upon the castle in the mountains, when the healers confine her to a bed because even days later, she’s still too cold and can’t stomach more than simple gruel, she wakes one morning to find flowers by her bedside and a note stating that the Commander wishes her well. He doesn’t speak of it later — and she’s all too content to leave the matter unsaid.

It makes her skin crawl. Templars like him do not perform such gestures for mages unless they want something in return, and the price demanded by such a gesture would always be hers to bear and never his.

(Amhaira’s ordeal, she remembers, had started with flowers.)

The weight of it threatens to choke her, during their first official war council. It’s ridiculous, because his presence has never bothered her _this_ much before — but then she thinks of a Templar’s gauntleted hand reaching out to her, of a light so harsh and brilliant that it threatens to destroy everything she is. She thinks of the people singing, naming her their Inquisitor, and of walking on a bridge suspended high, high off the ground, creaking and groaning beneath her feet as the ropes holding it in place threaten to snap with the slightest misstep.

—and Leliana takes her hand then, gently rubbing circles into it, and Josephine even more gently ushers the Commander out of the room. It’s a familiar gesture — one she’s performed for Amhaira and countless other apprentices and enchanters who’d been unlucky enough to be on the worst kind of Templar attention.

She doesn’t know how long she stands there, all but clinging to Leliana’s hand as she waits for her heart to stop hammering in her chest and for the vice grip around her lungs to ease. Leliana doesn’t ask for an explanation — and Juniper wouldn’t be able to give one even if she wanted to. Nothing had actually happened to her, back at Ostwick — and yet the mere _possibility_ of it continues to choke and paralyze her, long after the physical threat of it is gone.

Eventually, she lets go. Leliana gives her a tiny, knowing smile, and says nothing.

* * *

 

Somehow, no one comes to ask if there’s something amiss between her and the Commander. No one seems to suspect a thing, and she can’t tell if the inner circle is simply that good at keeping their suspicions to themselves, or if it truly looks like nothing is wrong.

The ruse of civility is so seamless that one day, she’s asked to deliver a missive to him. Cullen, she knows, tends to lock himself in his room when not at the war table, and Josephine had given him a _lot_ of paperwork the previous day. The door is slightly ajar, and she’d like to think that if he truly hadn’t wanted visitors, he would have kept it closed. She takes a deep breath, walks in—

—and glass shatters against the wall, mere inches from her head. On the other side of the room, there’s the Commander, his hands shaking as he stares, and stares, and stares — and if she were paying attention, she’d notice that it’s a horrified stare, wide-eyed and brows shooting into his hairline as he opens his mouth and there are no _words_. She’d notice that he looks unwell, his face pale and drawn as she’s caught him in a moment where he’d likely much rather be left alone.

But her heart is in her throat and she can’t breathe, and all she can see is _light_. 

(She was a fool to ever think that it would be different, among these people.)

“I…” he says, his voice cracking at the edge of the word. “I’m so…”

He raises his arm, and she acts without thinking — a small burst of magic that sends him flying backward. He lets out a pained grunt as he falls hard against his desk, and she _runs_ —

—and she knows that, in no short time, she’ll be dragged to a cell in chains, because one does not simply attack the Commander of the Inquisition’s forces. For now, though, she curls into a ball on the floor in her room after bolting the door shut, and tries very hard not to cry.

* * *

 

She doesn’t leave her room for two days. Josephine, bless her, leaves a small mountain of paperwork at her doorstep to at least lend to the illusion that Juniper is indeed busy and not hiding like a coward.

She wishes she hadn’t attacked him. (She wishes she’d done worse.) He’s the Commander of the Inquisition, and someone who deserves her respect. (He’s a dirty, rotten Templar, no better than the rest.) The incident in his room was an accident, and he would never deliberately hurt her. (It’s only a matter of time.)

Eventually, though, she has to leave. There’s little choice in the matter — they’ve been planning this trip to Emprise du Leon for months, and if the Inquisition doesn’t hate her already for what she’s done to its Commander, then it definitely will if she fails to show up for this expedition.

When she emerges from her room again, she doesn’t know what to expect — perhaps for someone to come to her immediately with accusations, or people in Templar armor watching the mages in a cruel imitation of the Circle because if the person who’s supposed to lead them couldn’t be trusted to watch herself, then how could they?

—but when she steps outside, nothing has changed. Senior Enchanter Mireille’s in the courtyard by the throne room, laughing and elbowing an exasperated-looking Vivienne in the ribs. There’s an enchanter from Kirkwall watching as sparkles form in a child’s hand, an apprentice twirling her staff to build a sculpture of ice, two boys boys laughing and running as one throws up a glyph of repulsion to slow down the other. 

—and in the corner of her vision, just at the bottom of the stairs, there’s Cullen. “Inquisitor,” he says. “I, uh…” He looks away sheepishly, rubs the back of his neck. “Do you have a moment?”

He’s not armed, save for a small knife he wears on his belt, and he stands just far enough away that it doesn’t send her heart into her throat, but not so far away that she couldn’t do the same as she did to him in his office — and she knows in that moment that, somehow, it would be perfectly all right if she were to say _no_. “Of course,” she answers anyway, for reasons she can’t entirely understand.

The relief is immediate, and the grin he gives her is almost too big for his face. “Oh, that’s—okay, then! Shall we…?” He sits down awkwardly, abruptly where he is, smiling up at her expectantly as she sits a little ways away from him. “Listen,” he says. “I, uh… I owe you an apology. For what happened the other day, and… well, for everything, really.”

Were this any other Templar, there would be a catch — in the worst case, a special favor she’d have to perform for him; in the best case, the acceptance of more scrutiny. But that had never been an issue, with Cullen. He’s never treated her any differently than he did any other mage or non-mage — more delicately, perhaps, but even that has little to do with her magic.

And yet, she still hurt him.

“No,” she whispers. “You have nothing to apologize for.” She’s not particularly sorry, but her anger is the last thing the mages who’ve allied themselves with the Inquisition need — not when retaliation against her could spell disaster for them. “I was the one who… even _before_ , I…” Her thoughts stutter to a halt, and she clamps her mouth shut before she can embarrass herself further.

He shakes his head. “You were only defending yourself.”

—so she was, but that has never been _enough_.

“I was…” he says. “Well…” He takes a deep breath, clenches his hands in his lap and averts his eyes downward, and says: “I’ve stopped taking lyrium.”

That… is unexpected. “Oh,” is all she can think to say — and she wishes she could say more, because he’s still very tense and it’s more than a little obvious that it had taken a lot for him to come to her with this at all.

“Sometimes,” he continues, “my body and my mind… struggle to handle it. It makes me see and hear things that aren’t there, makes me anxious and irritable, and sometimes it leads me to do things that are unworthy of… well, not only you, but everyone.” Then he looks at her, directly into her eyes, and she can’t bring herself to look away. “There is no excuse for the way I acted that day… but I will not be bound to the Order any longer. The Inquisition… _you_ deserve better than that.”

Something in her gut releases, and she exhales slowly, relaxedly. It’s not a comfort, to be with him now, but the urge to flee is, absurdly, gone. “Who else knows?” she asks.

“Just Cassandra,” he answered. “I told her back when I’d first started this.”

She presses her lips together and considers this: that every Templar she’s ever met had taken lyrium throughout their lives, until they lost their minds to it as they grew older. Not once did she consider that they would be dependent on it — that it could destroy them, if they were to refuse it.

—and despite everything Templars have done to mages, this former Knight Captain helped make the Inquisition a home for the mages that chose to join. He did so with nary a complaint, despite Cassandra’s disapproval and Vivienne’s disdain.

—and despite everything Templars have done to her, he has only ever tried to help her.

“Tell me the next time you feel that unwell,” she says. “I might know some spells that will alleviate the symptoms if… if you’ll allow me.”

The tension in his shoulders eases, and he smiles. “Oh, that’s… that would be wonderful, actually. Thank you.”

She can’t bring herself to smile back, but she gives him a nod. He walks her to the gates and says: “Safe travels.”

—and maybe it has something to do with the utter absurdity of a former Templar wishing this for a former Circle mage, but she can’t help but look at him as she walks on — and he smiles at her and waves without a care.

* * *

 

Back in the days immediately following the fall of Ostwick’s Circle, Juniper would lie on the grass, holding up the copy of Varric’s _Tale of the Champion_ that she shared with Senior Enchanter Mireille to the stars. There were a few passages they’d annotated — one toward the beginning, of the former Grey Warden who ran a free clinic in Kirkwall’s slums — of the Dalish First who gave up everything to reclaim just the tiniest bit of the elves of old — of the escaped slave who lived for years in a house his old master had abandoned — and she’d wonder if _this_ was what freedom would taste like. What she had then was a pale imitation of it— it was difficult to enjoy living outside the Circle when there was the threat of Templars abandoning all pretense of vigilance and striking her down where she stood, simply because of what she was.

She wanted them all to _burn_. It was a pointlessly petty notion, but in those first few days, it was all she had. She wouldn’t destroy them all, no — she wasn’t strong enough for that — but she would take down with her as many as she could. It wouldn’t be a blaze anywhere near as glorious as that which destroyed Kirkwall’s Chantry, but it would be _something_ — a way to say to them all, _I am here and you cannot knock me down so easily_.

It’s what she’d poured into her magic as she worked with Cassandra, Varric, and Solas those first few days. It was for Senior Enchanter Mireille, who had never wanted to fight, who _couldn’t_ fight more often than not because of her bad knees, and yet was forced to do so anyway as people in silver armor and grey skirts saw fit to arbitrate whether she lived or died. It was for Amhaira, who could be either home in her alienage or dead at the side of the road to Highever, because no news was rarely, if ever, a guarantee of safety.

—but most of all, it was for herself: because the Ostwick Circle hadn’t been _that_ bad, not as bad as Kirkwall, but nothing would ever be as bad as Kirkwall — because failure meant death, Tranquility, dishonor to a family she only knew as far as she shared their name. Somehow, she’d endured while she was still trapped in that tower; only when she was out did the reality of it threaten to crush her, nightmares of those same people in silver armor and red skirts robbing her of sleep and fear threatening to send everything she ate shooting right back up.

So she buried it, because there was nothing else to do. She buried it for Senior Enchanter Mireille, who was counting on her to get to safety. She buried it for the people who called her _the Herald of Andraste_ because without the title, she was little more than a mage who may or may not have killed the Divine.

But most of all, she buried it for herself — because if she didn’t, then it would surely destroy her.

* * *

 

—and this is what freedom tastes like, in the end: a roof over her head and food in her stomach, neither of which is conditional on her success in controlling her magic. There’s freedom in morning walks with Josephine, in exchanging her Circle teachings for Solas’ private studies of the Fade, in sparring with Iron Bull and the Chargers without having to worry about seeming _too_ powerful, in curling up in a chair in the library and not be expected to contribute anything towards conversation with Dorian because their coexistence in that space is never made awkward with silence.

There’s freedom, too, in spending time of Cullen. There’s freedom in the afternoons they sometimes spend in the grass just outside the throne room. There’s freedom in the walks they take together, in the meals they share together, in returning from a long mission and being able to simply go to him and talk to him about everything and nothing. 

He talks of Kinloch and Kirkwall, Greagoir and Irving and Meredith and Orsino, and everything in between. It’s hard to do more than listen, at first — but as he launches into a story of the Red Templar Samson, back when they’d shared a room, she wonders if it would be all right to talk about Senior Enchanter Mireille and Amhaira, about Ser Gerome the Templar half a decade younger than her who’d taught them how to build a fire and cook and mend clothes once they were outside the Circle, about the family she knows only as far as she shares their name.

The freedom here, she realizes, is that there is always a _choice_. Cullen asks for her company, but never demands it — and as a result, there is no fear, should she refuse. Either way, he will always greet her with a smile, and expect nothing from her in return. Sometimes, on days when the memories of Ostwick threaten to choke her, doing this with Cullen is more than she can handle. Some days, the circles under his eyes are too dark, or the letters on the notes he writes her are too jagged, and she goes anyway because her own discomfort pales in comparison to what they’ve mutually decided to refer to as his illness, and she’s so very tired of _hiding_.

On these days, she finds him at his desk with his head buried in his hands. Her heart thuds painfully in her chest, but she swallows it down and crosses the room — and allows herself a moment to remember that this is no Templar, not like the ones she knew at Ostwick, but her friend.

His hands are clammy and warm as she pries them from his face. She presses her hand to his cheek and sends in the tiniest pulse of healing magic. “Where are you now?” she asks.

“Kinloch,” he grunts. “Uldred is… upstairs. Everyone’s _gone_ , I couldn’t—I couldn’t—“

“Shh…” She cards her fingers through his hair, and his fingers tighten around her other hand in her lap. “This is going to hurt,” she whispers as she conjures a stronger wave of healing magic. Belatedly, she realizes that it might not hurt him at all — Senior Enchanter Mireille had done the same to her more often than not and it always gives her a headache afterward, but Juniper has always been more sensitive to this kind of magic.

“This is— _wrong_ —“ he chokes out. “I—I should be taking it. Meredith said—“

“You chose to stop,” she reminds him, and squeezes his hand back. “All on your own.” 

“Do you think I should—“

“ _No_.” He flinches, and she exhales slowly, pausing to make sure that her next words aren’t quite so harsh. “Whether you take lyrium again or you continue to refuse it, it should be _your_ decision. Not mine, and not Meredith’s.” It’s not the first time she’s said this to him. Some days, it’s enough to end the downward spiral of his thoughts — but today is an especially bad day, and it takes several more reassurances for him to calm. 

Days like this end with her helping him to his bed, his arm draped over her shoulders as he tries, in vain, to burden her with as little of his weight as possible. “Thank you,” he says as she pulls the blankets up to cover him, and smiles wearily at her. “There’s some bread at my desk. Take it.” 

She raises an eyebrow at him, because she hasn’t yet told him that her stomach has been in knots all day and she hasn’t eaten since dinner the previous night — and he shouldn’t be worrying about her when he’s unwell himself. “Later,” she promises anyway. She takes his hand and squeezes it comfortingly, and doesn’t let go until a long while after he falls asleep.


End file.
